Joan is CEO and founder of Alpha Wealth Advisors, LLC., a financial consulting firm advising family offices, private foundations, and endowments in the U.S. and South America. Prior to founding the firm, she was a senior investment advisor with the global asset manager, Capital Group, where she built a sizeable private client business. Ms. Steel became Aon Corporation’s Chief Marketing Officer after leading their global investor and media relations. Prior to Aon, she was a senior executive in her family’s privately held water treatment chemical manufacturing and distribution business that was sold to Olin Corporation. She also co-founded and headed institutional fixed income sales and trading for E.F. Hutton in Chicago after starting her career at Salomon Brothers as an institutional fixed income broker and one of the first professional women on Wall Street. Ms. Steel is an independent director and audit committee chair of the Mercer Funds, a family of institutional mutual funds, and former independent director of the Hershey Trust Company, controlling shareholder of The Hershey Company. She chairs the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Chicago Chapter, serves as a trustee of Rush University Medical Center and vice chair of its investment committee, and is a director and treasurer of the Cuneo Foundation. She is a former trustee of Loyola University of Chicago where she chaired their investment committee. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, a BS from Georgetown University, and has completed continuing education at Harvard Business School and Stanford Director’s College.